


Time (After Time)

by timeheist



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 02:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2092005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/timeheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enough people have died and just once, just once, the Doctor would put an end to it. Time Lord Victorious "fix it fic" for The Year That Never Was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time (After Time)

I win.

Those two words were all that echoed in The Doctor’s mind. I win, I win, I win, almost as though he had his own drumbeat to compliment that of the man who had said ‘I win’ to begin with. It was maddening! Once upon a time, The Doctor had believed those words to be the last, desperate fantasy of a dying friend, delirium, nothing more. He had comforted, cradled and even pleaded with those words, sure that they wouldn’t be his last, but now he knew better. Now he knew that they had been a taunt, a challenge, a sneer; The Master’s final chance at making sure that The Doctor would never have the ultimate victory. But he was wrong, The Master was very wrong, because the two of them hadn’t just been survivors, they had been the last two players on the universe’s game of chess. And now it was just The Doctor left, the player and now the winner… And he hadn’t even thought to collect his prize, or wonder what it was. Until now. The laws of time, the Time Lord Victorious, and like he’d told Adelaide they would obey him. They had no choice.

So where to start? He’d miscalculated with Bowie Base One, made a mistake that had proved fatal, but this time he couldn’t afford to fail. He thought that he needed to read the instruction manual from cover to cover before, but now he knew that that was the point, his mistake. There were no instructions, you just needed to know how to play the game, and this time the stakes were too high to lose. To win, he would have to cross his own timeline, possibly twice, create infinite and diverse paradoxes at the drop of a pin, and repeat the one mistake that even the Council had been wary of messing with but had never really wasn’t a mistake at all! A Harp of Rassilon might have come in handy, but he would have to do it the hard way now, and risk tearing himself and his TARDIS into oblivion in the process. After all, it was his fault that the Harp had been destroyed at all. It was a risk that, desperately, furiously, he was willing to take, to prove all the laws of reason, logic, time and existence wrong, to begin with, and then to win. The Master was not going to die – not while he was around! Even if he had to bring him back to life to ensure it. Why not? It had been done before. And like his adversary, The Doctor hated to admit it but he needed The Master. It may have been him against the Universe but even infinity needs personification to fight a war.

Years ago, they’d been friends, as close as brothers even; The Doctor allowed his memory to wander as fuel for his automatic piloting. The way he flew a TARDIS, even after nine hundred years, he needed to detach himself from the process to do it properly. That had been his problem before, his emotions had taken control of the helm. And besides – when had The Doctor ever been famed for his one track, focused mind? Although he had come from the House of Lungbarrow and The Master from Oakdown, they’d met in the Prydonian Academy at a very young age. Their friendship had solidified when they were both in the Deca, and Theta Sigma, The Doctor’s younger self, had been inconsolably magnetised to The Master’s, Koschei. They had always been there for each other. As innocent Time Lords, they had rarely fought; as renegade Time Lords, there had rarely been a ceasefire. What they needed was a happy medium, but The Doctor was done believing that could happen on his own. He had to make it happen. Somehow. By whatever means possible. And he had to save The Master’s latest life.

The Doctor paused in both thought and execution. This was the tricky bit, now, the part that could either go one way or the other with glorious or disastrous consequences. He frowned, eyes locked ahead, then leant forward to puAll one long, blocky lever down towards himself. It was now or never, to risk a cliché, and he was going to have to decide before the chance was missed. Did he have the nerve for it? He pulled the lever without thinking of the answer, grasping it with both of his hands to maintain his balance as the world ran to one side like oil thrown on a priceless watercolour painting. The lights dimmed, his TARDIS acting up in protest, and The Doctor hissed ferociously. “I’m the Time Lord, what I say goes.” He’d never spoken to his TARDIS like that before, but now was not the time for long honoured niceties. Other Time Lords had taken the same approach in the past, and most of them had been better pilots that he had. What did that say for his methods? That he was too soft. It seemed to do the trick, too; the psionic bond between Time Lord and TARDIS was too strong to be severed by one quarrel, and the old girl had forgiven him so much in the past. In the same way, he had never given up on her, the last Type 40 TARDIS in existence.

The result was explosive, and The Doctor almost regretted it. But his own words were fresh in his head, and he’d be a fool to go back on them so quickly, so he kept on going. Flicking switches to the on position, turning dials up to the max, making sure that every engine was whirring, every gear gyrating, every bit of the TARDIS pushed to the very max, before he switched the control to manual and just at the right moment, threw himself out of the Time Vortex, just one second out of synch with reality for only a second before he plummeted back through the confines of space and time and a heavy landing inside of the Valiant. Today’s date? He swung the sparking and crackling monitor around to face him, reading the High Gallifreyan that warned him he was too close to the edge, or going too fast, or running too many appliances at once, and found what he was looking for. Earth: The Year That Never Was. The point where his TARDIS navigational system refused to acknowledge he was anytime or anywhere at all. Despite himself, The Doctor couldn’t help but crow, jumping up with glee and disrupting the path even further.

“Sorry old girl, but we’ve done it! Well… I’ve done it!”

The wasn’t time to change, or to fix his hair, or to tie his laces, the usual things he did when he went out to do something. No, he was crossing his own timeline here in exactly the same way that Rose had managed to bring the krillitane crashing down on her parents’ wedding, so it didn’t really matter if his outfit didn’t match, did it? All that mattered was that he managed to do what he was here to do, and became the Time Lord Victorious. Picking up his sonic screwdriver as an afterthought, he was quickly out the door, his TARDIS parked by the Paradox machine but oh so better hidden, and half stumbled half ran down the corridor, hoping against hope with each digital clock he passed, each ticking clock that he knew The Master couldn’t resist, each step that he took towards the conference room that he wasn’t too late, and wasn’t about to be blown out of existence. Both him running, and him with The Master.

And he could feel it; himself reverting back to his normal self, the power of every free person on the planet chanting his name through the Archangel Network, the – although he hadn’t felt it at the time, oh could he feel it now! – overwhelming power he wielded as he rose from the cage, physical confinements melting away at his will and laser screwdrivers skittering across the floor as though they were little more than a feather! He would have laughed, if he hadn’t been so determined to reach the room before Lucy shot her husband, or just in time to force him to regenerate. He would win, he would succeed, and for the first time he knew what it truly meant to be a renegade of Gallifrey – insanity coupled with the knowledge that you are on top of the universe, whether that happens to be true or not. For the first time, The Doctor was willing to believe that he was. And soon he would be the one saying the fateful words I win. But first he had to reach The Master.

He got to the door just in time to watch Jack come through it, so distracted by catching The Master as he ran that he didn’t notice another Doctor just a breath away from him. Jack, like every other person in the room, had reason to hate The Master, and that was the problem with the human race. So quick to condemn, to hate, to crave revenge… Sometimes it hurt him to see the planet he’d fought for so many times betray him like that, but he couldn’t focus on his own disappointments right now. Plunging the TARDIS key around his neck and sneaking up behind them all, he kept his attention poised on Lucy, watching The Master egging on Francine, watching himself take the gun from Martha’s mother, and waiting for the moment when Lucy would make for the gun he had dropped. It was always people like Lucy who were underestimated in the end; every time. Paying heed to nothing but Lucy and his protesting one time friend, it meant that he was right there when she raised the gun from the ground, steadied her hand to fire it straight into The Master’s chest…

“No!” His roar of anger and pain caught everyone’s attention, then. He spun around, taking the steps two at a time to rest his hand over Lucy’s, prising her finger almost roughly from the trigger of the gun and realising then what he’d done – drawn attention to himself, the one thing that would make him visible to all. He stared the blond down with all the fury of a Time Lord as she stood, shaking, then took the gun as gently as he could from her hands, this time putting the hateful weapon into his pocket. Sighing with deep relief, he turned then, taking the key from around his neck and letting it drop to the grilling of the Valiant with a painfully loud clang. Martha stared at him with mixed confusion, Jack with fury, and The Master… The Doctor spun his head to look at his adversary, perhaps the angriest and most relieved of them all in equal parts. And he ignored everyone’s shouts, the confused calculations of himself at the front trying to piece it all together, turned his shoulder just so to avoid brushing into himself, and rested one of his hands on each of The Master’s shoulders, staring him down for just long enough for The Master’s eyes to widen in recognition.

“How about that?” He snapped, pulling The Master to himself in a hug that was too tight than was really necessary. “I win.”

“Oh Doctor…!” The Master couldn’t help himself, he laughed, the crazed sound echoing around the room and silencing everyone else. “Oh, Doctor, you did! You snapped.” He paused, his expression turning more serious as The Doctor let go of him and held his shoulders even tighter. “I am addressing The Doctor and not The Valeyard, hmm?”

The Doctor’s eyes locked to attention, focusing again on The Master with a stern expression. “I am myself, and I have not snapped. Come on.” He pulled at the handcuffs The Master wore, marching to pull him out of the room and back to his TARDIS.

“Now just wait a second!” The Doctor turned again, and The Master peering mockingly over The Doctor’s shoulder, purposefully putting himself too close to his enemy, breathing hot breath into his ear, just close enough for something more. The Doctor could just feel himself blush as Jack confronted him, storming closer and shaking The Doctor by the shoulders. “Are you out of your mind, Doc?!”

“Doctor, not Doc.”

“You could destroy the fabric of time and space doing this, and you know it! What’s gotten into you?”

The Doctor shook his head sadly, and repeated the same words that he had said to Adelaide less than a few hours ago. “There are laws of time. Once upon of time there were people in charge of those laws but they died.” He looked at The Master, the expression on his face terribly guilty. He’d been through this, spent an entire ninth regeneration wallowing in self pity about what his actions had resulted in during the Time War, and he wasn’t about to let the knowledge destroy him again. Besides, if he could do this, save The Master, who was to say he couldn’t break the Timelock on the War and save the Time Lord race as well? “They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me!” The Doctor broke off from his script, confusing even The Master. “And him.” He nodded at The Master. “And it's taken me all these years to realize that the laws of time are mine and they will obey me! So yes, Jack, I know what I’m doing. And this is my final choice.”

Jack stepped back, horrified, and even Martha, sweet Martha Jones, didn’t dare question The Doctor when he was in such a state. They could only watch in horror as The Doctor took the handcuffs off of The Master and walked him stoically out of the door, to who knew where, and left them to their fates. The Doctor didn’t worry – he knew that Jack would deal with things and that Martha could fly the TARDIS, and all he cared about was the Time Lord whose life he had just saved.

“So what are you going to do with me? Still keep me?” The Master sneered, not struggling only because of his surprise at his old friend’s change in behaviour. He walked close, as though they were still Time Tots on Gallifrey discussing quantum physics and the latest news, and even dared to put his mouth practically against The Doctor’s ear, his voice half sinister and half… something else. True to his mood, The Doctor didn’t respond, the dark expression still marring his features. After a few minutes of being led towards the parked TARDIS in complete silence, even The Master began to grow worried. “Doctor?” He paused, and lowered his voice. “Theta Sigma?” Hearing his name back in the Academy, The Doctor glared fit to burst at The Master, and The Master quietened respectfully; he knew there was something on The Doctor’s mind, and so long as he wasn’t the cause of his discomfort he was willing to respect the silence between them.

After a moment, The Doctor spoke, his voice low and resigned, all thought of his victory vanished. “That’s not my name.” He paused. “I’m offering you a chance, Koschei-“

“That’s not my name.” The Master snarled, as the last two Time Lords stepped into The Doctor’s TARDIS.

“Master, then. I’m offering you a chance. Stay with me, travel with me, give it all up. Admit that I’ve won this time, and we can be friends again.”

“That’s never going to happen, Doctor.” He sighed, leaning against the locked door with his arms folded over his chest. “Why deceive yourself?”

“Because I am the Time Lord victorious!” The Doctor snapped, slamming his fist down onto the counter, and The Master closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. There was no arguing with a Doctor that had gone mad. “And I win.”


End file.
